


Phoenix [to rise from her own ashes, she must first burn]

by nokreli



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gen, Good Morgana (Merlin), Reincarnation, Sane Morgana, more tags will prob be added as i think of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-05-16 05:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19311148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nokreli/pseuds/nokreli
Summary: Hundreds and hundreds of years after her death, Morgana is reincarnated as a half-blood witch named Mara La Reine. But a life with no Uther does her more than just a little good, and when she finally remembers her past life, she is as sane as can be. And so she waits for Merlin, waits to apologize for everything, and it is then that she decides to owl Dumbledore about possibly teaching divination.Or, in which a sane, reincarnated Morgana waits for Merlin from her position as Hogwarts Divination Professor.AU of 5th year where Morgana becomes Harry's professor instead of Firenze.





	1. in which mara is... not mara

**Author's Note:**

> “In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix first must burn.”  
> ― Octavia E. Butler

Mara La Reine is born on a cold Winter day in Paris to two loving parents. They are not perfect, but neither is she, so she doesn’t mind too much. Violet and Gabriel La Reine raise her to the best of their ability, but she can’t help but feel that sometimes, their best just isn’t enough. As long as she can remember, she’s been tormented by nightmares — visions, almost. At night, she sees… herself. But the strangest part is not that she’s dreaming about herself, no, she’s quite sure that’s pretty normal. The strange part is that it’s as if they’re almost linear, and always in an unusual medieval land. She dreams of herself, of a little girl her age with wild dark locks and eyes as green as the sea. Her mother is a witch while her father is happily muggle. Mara loves to revel in the best of both worlds, but not even her mother and her knowledge of magic can help her understand what’s happening to her. Soon enough she learns to lie, to deceive, to assure them that all is fine and perfect, that she is safe and normal,  _ happy.  _ Nonetheless, it never stops being a lie. Worst of all, though, once she starts lying, she realizes how horribly, horribly good at it she is.

Mara is 10 when the girl in her dreams’ father dies. For every tear that the girl cries, a tear slips down Mara’s face in turn. She has never known such grief. Eventually, though, the girl in her dreams moves on, she goes to live in a new home, a gorgeous castle out of a fairy tale. And, in turn, so does Mara. The next few years, though, are hectic for her as her parents split up, as she goes back and forth between them, as she starts at Beauxbatons, and as they both eventually die when she is 17— separately, but both somehow in the span of 6 months. She mourns her part but inside, she just feels broken. She feels… alone. She had excelled at the scholastic side of school, she always had, but she never seemed to be able to gain any good friends, certainly not any ones to last.

And so on the day she graduates from Beauxbatons, she graduates with perfect grades. With no friends, no parents, and no ties to anything.

As her dreams grow more and more violent she travels, trying to get as far away as she can from France. She’s almost made it to California when something… changes. In her dreams she sees a white, disfigured dragon, bright as the sun, guiding her way. She hops on a plane but instead of going back to France, she feels pulled in another direction. Her plane lands at the London Heathrow Airport where she rents a car and drives it. She hasn’t been to England in a good few years, but somehow she knows exactly where she’s going. Several strange hours later, she finds herself at a lake with a small island near the center. On the island, she sees a spire along with what looks like some older ruins.

The wind whistles loudly and blows her hair in her face. Entirely instinctually, she walks down to the lakeshore. She stands at the edge of the unknown. Mara sticks one foot in the water and a vision races through her head.

There's a man with raven hair wielding a sword, a man with blonde hair bleeding through his armor, and… the girl from her dreams, her hair wild like a lion’s mane. And she really is just a girl, she looks so young, so fragile. She recognizes all of them, of course. She’s seen them many, many times in her dreams but this is the first time their faces are so clear, it’s the first that she is able to recognize the girl as her self. Their mouths move and though she can’t hear them, she knows exactly what they’re saying.

 

_ “Hello, Emrys.” _

 

_ “What a joy it is to see you, Arthur. Look at you, not so tall and mighty now. You may have won the battle, but you've lost the war. You're going to die by Mordred's hand. But don't worry, my dear brother, I won't let you die alone. I will stay and watch over you, until the wolves gorge on your carcass and bathe in your blood.” _

 

_ “No, the time for all this bloodshed is over. I blame myself for what you've become...but this has to end.” _

 

What is he thinking? He can’t kill her. He is nothing, but she… she is a  _ god. _

 

_ “I am a High Priestess. No mortal blade can kill me.” _

 

And then the raven-haired man stabs the girl, stabs  _ Mara _ . And she knows nothing but pain.

 

_ “This is no mortal blade. Like yours, it was forged in a dragon's breath.” _

 

She grasps herself as she falls, falls, falls.

 

_ “Goodbye, Morgana.” _

 

Distantly, she hears a splash and then, she thinks as falls into the water, a strong current appearing from nowhere sweeping her out into deeper water, everything finally makes sense.

She knows nothing but the peace of the infinite void.

 

-

 

Her eyes open.

Her name is Morgana.

Her mouth opens.

Her name is Morgana.

She is drowning.

_ Her name is Morgana _ .

 

Morgana shoots up from the dark, she emerges coughing, hacking up water on the sand. She is alive, and it is the 20th century. One thought darts across her mind.  _ Where is Merlin? _


	2. in which morgana secures a job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> morgana deals with the whole, you know, being a thousand-year-old evil witch from arthurian tales thing and some other stuff too

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god im so sorry this is so late this summer has not been the best for my mental health but i hope you enjoy

Morgana doesn’t ever find Merlin. Eventually, though, she does come to be at peace with herself. She was the reincarnation of a witch who haunts the stories of children from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. In another life, she had killed and killed without remorse. In pain and in fear, she’d been driven to insanity, she’d  _ burned.  _

For a long time, she just felt sad. Sometimes, she wondered if she had just been Morgana with amnesia, or if she was still Mara, just with the memories of some long-dead homicidal maniac. She didn’t know if she’d ever decide. Still, she thought that she’d accepted it, the duality of her being, and accepted that she might never figure out who she really was, but she was okay with that,

The one thing she does know, though, is that in all honesty, she’s happy that Merlin killed her. The woman she’d been in another life? She was not going to stop, she was going to keep hurting and killing and furthering the cycle of hate. These two decades she’d had, though not always happy, had finally granted her peace. She was herself, nothing more or less, and the violent times of the past had driven her insane. The best thing for her, and especially for everyone else, may just have been Merlin killing her, and she would be forever grateful for that. She’d finally had time to just exist, to reflect, and she’d forgiven nearly all of them. Her friends, her  _ family.  _ There were some, of course, that she would never forgive. Some, like Uther, who she hoped she never meet again. She didn’t really know how this whole reincarnation thing worked, but she hoped that she might get to see them again, see Merlin, Arthur, and Gwen, see her friends. If she ever did see them again, though, God, she just hoped they could find it in them to forgive her. She thought that she’d understand if they didn’t.

Morgana didn’t ever end up going back to France. It holds nothing but bad memories. Instead, she stayed close to Avalon. If there was anywhere she’d find Merlin, this was it. She wanted answers… She wanted to apologize.

In her waiting, she visited Wizarding London and she caught up on politics. She’d already known about Harry Potter, but she found herself learning about his myriad misadventures and his horrid sense of self-preservation. Sorting through the Daily Prophet’s self-contradicting information was always entertaining.

Meanwhile, though, her abilities return. With her visions of the past all throughout childhood, she supposed they never really left, but either way, she started to dream not just of her past self, but of the future as well. More often than not, it was Harry Potter who occupied her dreams. She saw him and oh, Goddess help her, his sense of justice never failed to remind her of Arthur’s. It was not long, therefore, until he gained her sympathies. He and his two friends, Hermione and Ron, that was.

It was her dreams that showed her that awful woman Umbridge (Morgana hates her and all her resemblance to Uther right from the start, especially their mutual gods-damned righteousness, it was always the righteousness that she hated the most), and it was her dreams that showed her when Umbridge would fire Harry’s divination teacher. This was it.

Though she hadn’t quite known it yet, this was the moment she’d been waiting for. There was no doubt in her mind that Merlin would be found, at one point or another, at the center of all the action — which was, at this point in time, Hogwarts. Immediately, she sent a letter by owl to the headmaster. Though he may have been slyer than most, Dumbledore was still a man. And Morgana had always known how to charm a man. Trelawney wouldn’t be fired for another few weeks, so in preparation, she asked him to keep her on hand if he ever needed a divination teacher, told him that it had been her dream to work with kids since she was one herself, told him she was a natural Seer and all the experience she had on the subject. She put in a copy of her grades from Beauxbatons for good measure. And so she sent it off, never having been surer of anything.

Three weeks and two days passed before she heard someone knocking at her door. She opened it to find Albus Dumbledore himself. It wasn’t hard to pretend to be surprised.

“Headmaster Dumbledore?! What— what are doing here?”

“Ms. Le Reine, is it?” He smiled kindly and his eyes twinkled behind old half-moon spectacles, “I’m afraid that I’ve received word that our High Inquisitor, Dolores Umbridge, I assume you’ve heard of her appointment to Hogwarts?” Here Dumbledore looked up at her for confirmation and she nodded slowly, feigning confusion as if she had no idea where this was headed.

“Well,” Dumbledore continued, “I’ve been informed that she has seen it fit to fire our current Divination professor on Monday and, after looking over your application, I think that you, Ms. Le Reine, would be a perfect fit as Professor Trelawney’s replacement. Do you accept this position?”

Dumbledore looked straight at her, meeting her eyes with an inquiring gaze. He was hiding something, some ulterior motive or hidden reason for hiring her, or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with her, maybe it was something about Umbridge who he had mentioned. Morgana would bet anything that he was a man with a dozen contingency plans each for any number of situations. Whatever it was, she was confident that if it affected her, she could find out easily. So she met his steady gaze with a shy smile and a tilt of her chin.

“I would be delighted to, Headmaster, and please, call me Mara,” Morgana replied easily, the perfect picture of innocence, complete with the slightest French accent. “So, when do I start?”

Dumbledore smiled and it seemed genuine, “If you could be there on hand Monday afternoon, that would be wonderful, Mara. Perhaps I could meet you at the Hog’s Head in Hogsmeade Monday afternoon and then we could take the Hogwarts Express from there?”

“Perfect,” Morgana said, and it really was. Soon enough she’d be at Hogwarts, and she didn’t know if it’d be weeks, months, or even years, but at some point,  _ Merlin  _ would be there, and that would make it all worth it. She’d protect Harry Potter in his stead, because she knew that was what he would want her to do, she would try to make up for all the horror she had caused in another life, and when she finally found Merlin, when she found Arthur and  _ Gwen _ , oh gods how she missed Gwen, she would apologize like never before and hope that somehow, they could manage to forgive her.

“Shall we say four, then?” Morgana asked him, “At the Hog’s Head? I’ll bring all my luggage.”

“Wonderful,” Dumbledore said, “I’ll see you then, we can discuss your contract in full once we get to Hogwarts. Goodbye, Mara, I’ll see you soon.”

“Goodbye,” Morgana said.

And with that, Dumbledore turned on his heel and apparated away.

Morgana smiled, and for once she felt like herself, her true self. She felt like both the woman of today that Mara Le Reine had grown up to be and the woman she had been at her prime a thousand years ago. Sane, brilliant, and oh so powerful. She felt as if she could do anything. As if she could accomplish the impossible.

And so she would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some of this felt a bit awkward but i hope you all liked it, if you have any ideas for this story (which i imagine to probably finish around the end of 5th year) please do comment them because i only have a general outline of this fic so far!
> 
> anyway i love morgana and i feel like gwen's relationship to morgana is touched upon not nearly enough in many fics so i alluded to that a bit. but yeah here we go hopefully this shall be the first of many updates to come and seriously keep commenting, it motivates me so much and encourages me to continue. all of you who have bookmarked, given me kudos, and especially commented on the first chapter, thank you so much! i havent ever experienced crossovers that i've written to get that much attention so the fact that one short chapter of a crossover wip im writing got 48 kudos when i barely expected 10 is absolutely incredible, thank you all so much and i hope that you continue to come along with me for this journey!
> 
> thank you again,  
> -elia


End file.
